Sound JUMP

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Predrag Vuckovic / The Associated Press / Red Bull The balloon that lifted Felix Baumgartner Sunday in Roswell, N.M. (CP)

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Ross D. Franklin / The Associated Press (ABOVE), Predrag Vuckovic / The Associated Press (TOP RIGHT) ABOVE: Felix Baumgartner celebrates with Art Thompson, technical project director, after his jump. RIGHT: The balloon that lifted the Austrian. (CP)

ROSWELL, N.M. -- Austrian extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner landed gracefully on Earth Sunday after a 39-kilometre jump from the stratosphere in a dramatic, record-breaking feat that officials said made him the first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound.

Baumgartner came down in the eastern New Mexico desert about nine minutes after jumping from his capsule 39 kilometres above Earth. He lifted his arms in victory shortly after landing, setting off loud cheers from jubilant onlookers and friends at a control centre in Roswell, N.M.

"When I was standing there on top of the world -- you become so humble. You do not think about breaking records anymore, you do not think about gaining scientific data. The only thing you want is to come back alive," he said after the jump.

Brian Utley, a jump observer from the International Federation of Sports Aviation, said preliminary figures show Baumgartner reached a maximum speed of 1,342 kilometres per hour. That amounts to Mach 1.24, which is faster than the speed of sound. No one has ever reached that speed wearing only a high-tech suit.

Baumgartner said travelling faster than sound is "hard to describe because you don't feel it." With no reference points, "You don't know how fast you travel," he told reporters.

"Sometimes we have to get really high to see how small we are," he said.

The altitude he leaped from also marked the highest ever for a skydiver -- more than three times the height of the average cruising altitude for a jetliner. Organizers said the descent lasted a little more than nine minutes, about half of it in free-fall. Utley said he travelled 36,529 metres in free-fall.

Three hours earlier, Baumgartner, known as Fearless Felix, had taken off in a pressurized capsule carried by a 55-storey ultra-thin helium balloon. After an at-times tense ascent, which included concerns about how well his face shield was working, the 43-year-old former military parachutist completed a final safety checklist with mission control.

As he exited his capsule from high above Earth, he flashed a thumbs-up, aware the feat was being shown on the Internet with a 20-second delay.

Any contact with the capsule on his exit could have torn his pressurized suit, a rip that could expose him to a lack of oxygen and temperatures as low as -57 C. That could have caused lethal bubbles to form in his body fluids.

None of that happened. Baumgartner activated his parachute as he neared Earth, gently gliding into the desert east of Roswell and landing without any apparent difficulty. The images triggered another loud cheer from onlookers at mission control, among them his mother, Eva Baumgartner, who cried as she was overcome with emotion.

He then was taken by helicopter to meet members of his team, whom he hugged in celebration.

Coincidentally, Baumgartner's attempted feat also marked the 65th anniversary of U.S. test pilot Chuck Yeager's successful attempt to become the first man to officially break the sound barrier aboard an airplane.

At Baumgartner's insistence, some 30 cameras on the capsule, the ground and a helicopter recorded the event Sunday. While it had been pegged as a live broadcast, organizers said the 20-second delay was imposed in case of a tragic accident.

Shortly after launch, screens at mission control showed the capsule as it began rising high above the New Mexico desert, with cheers erupting from organizers. Baumgartner could be seen on video, calmly checking instruments inside the capsule.

Baumgartner's team included Joe Kittinger, who first attempted to break the sound barrier from 31.4 kilometres up in 1960, reaching a speed of 988 km/h, just under the sound barrier. With Kittinger inside mission control Sunday, the two men could be heard going over technical details during the ascension.

"Our guardian angel will take care of you," Kittinger radioed to Baumgartner around the 30,000-metre mark. Kittinger noted it was getting "really serious" now.

An hour into the ascent, Baumgartner had gone up more than 19,200 metres and had gone through a trial run of the jump sequence.

-- The Associated Press

The facts on Felix

Felix Baumgartner

From: Austria

Age: 43

Jump distance: 39 kilometres

Maximum speed: 1,324 km/hour

Time in the air: Just over nine minutes, half in free-fall

YouTube viewers: 7.3 million

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 15, 2012 A9